


Midnight Clear

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 12 Days of Shipmas [12]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Post-Mockingjay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 10:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5536370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Katniss?” Peeta hesitates in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other holding a folded blanket. “Everything okay?”</p><p>She looks over her shoulder at him and smiles. “I’m fine,” she tells him, her voice only wavering slightly. Turning back to the fire, she shivers. The play of light and shadows across her bare neck creates an illusion of warmth that Peeta knows she doesn’t feel. “You didn’t need to come down.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Clear

“Katniss?” Peeta hesitates in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other holding a folded blanket. “Everything okay?”

She looks over her shoulder at him and smiles. “I’m fine,” she tells him, her voice only wavering slightly. Turning back to the fire, she shivers. The play of light and shadows across her bare neck creates an illusion of warmth that Peeta knows she doesn’t feel. “You didn’t need to come down.”

Peeta crosses the room in a few short strides but doesn’t reach for her—doesn’t touch. She’s come a long way in the year since the war, but this is a difficult season, as he’s well aware. So much about winter is pain, so much of snow is grief. So he keeps his hands to himself and simply stands beside her. “I was worried.”

To her credit, she doesn’t ask why, or tell him that he shouldn’t be. “So was I. I woke up because I was so worried.”

“About what?”

Katniss shakes her head and lets out a long breath. Tonight, it seems, talking isn’t helpful. She turns to him. “I think Haymitch liked your cookies today,” she says.

“Really?” Peeta chuckles, remembering the swirls of frosting and icing turned into frost and ice, and the pastries into little slices of edible winter. “If that’s his way of liking something, I never want to hear what he says when he hates it.”

“No, seriously,” Katniss insists. “He ate over half of them. I think that counts as a job well done.”

“Maybe,” Peeta allows. Privately, he thinks that when it comes to Haymitch, the job’s never done. But he doesn’t say that. Effie would tell them both to cheer up—there’s a celebration in the Capitol tonight, something called Christmas, the main purpose of which seems to be overeating. She invited them, and Haymitch too, but her expression said plainly that she never expected them to agree.

Just as well. Sometimes Peeta feels better suited to the chill and barren wastes of District Twelve beneath the snow. Tonight he’s been lucky, woken by an empty bed and not his own convulsive nightmares, but it’s hardly the norm.

Katniss shivers again, and Peeta holds out the blanket. She takes it and wraps its folds around herself, hugging it close. Her eyes linger on his face, the gray taking on the color of the flames. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, really,” he says, “but—I don’t think I like winter very much anymore. It used to be my favorite season, but now I just think about how everything’s dead.”

“Oh.” She blinks. “I’ve never thought about that.”

“What do you think of?”

She smiles slowly, late-night weariness softening her face. “How white the snow is,” she says. “How fresh the year will be.”

He looks away. “I wish I could see that.”

Katniss lays a hand on his arm, warm through his thin shirt, and Peeta feels an aching, scraping hope carve its place behind his ribs. “Don’t worry. You will.”


End file.
